If Trump was president would 911 terrorist attacks happen?

@beckyromero No, because the different agencies protected their turf. The CIA wouldn't have shared their intel with the FBI. Today with the DHS integrating everything, it's easier to anticipate threats and deal with them in advance.

@LeopoldBloom

The FBI team leads [b]in both[/b] Minnesota and Phoenix reported to the same FBI senior person in DC. So the dots were there to connect without needing the CIA involved.

Furthermore, Mueller tried to cover up for his Bureau's incompetence:

[quote]Officials said that particularly damaging for the F.B.I. director was Ms. Rowley's assertion that either intentionally or unintentionally, Mr. Mueller has since Sept. 11 directed people at the bureau to muddy the waters in their public statements about the Moussaoui case.

In her letter, Ms. Rowley criticizes assertions by F.B.I. leaders that the bureau's failure to act on the Moussaoui case and other clues last summer did not make a difference in preventing the attacks. She said that if the same officials at F.B.I. headquarters who handled the search warrant request from the Minneapolis office had been aware of a July memo from an agent in the F.B.I.'s Phoenix office warning that terrorists connected with Osama bin Laden might be trying to go to American flight schools, the Moussaoui case would have been handled differently.[/quote]
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/us/traces-terror-intelligence-reports-fbi-agent-says-superior-altered-report.html

@beckyromero Hindsight is 20/20. Do you have any idea how many leads the Bureau receives?

Bush was warned that bin Laden intended to mount an attack on the U.S. using commercial airliners. He chose to ignore this. If Al Gore had been elected, one thing he had planned was to require passenger jets to have a heavy locking steel door on the cockpit. If those had been in place on 9/11, the attackers may have been able to menace the passengers, but they wouldn't have been able to hijack the planes.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]Hindsight is 20/20.[/quote]

Sometimes so is [b][big][u]FORESIGHT[/u][/big][/b].

Mueller, George Tenet and Condi Rice get no pass from me on this.

Not when an FBI special agent wrote in a memo that he was worried Zacarias Moussaoui was going to "fly an airliner into the World Trade Center."

And then there's the so-called National Security expert Condi Rice.

"Who could have imagined planes being used as weapons?" she asked rhetorically during a press briefing, trying to explain away the total lack of imagination of our national security officials.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hziFBOx4yqc]

@beckyromero Yep, they were idiots. But turf wars between the various agencies also contributed to the lack of cooperation and inability to connect the dots.

@LeopoldBloom

The Federal Bureau of Incompetence had all it needed to connect the dots.

@beckyromero Again, in hindsight. Notice that they've done better since then. No one expected an attack like 9/11, and even bin Laden reportedly was surprised that the buildings collapsed.

However, it's not surprising considering how flimsy they were. Once the central columns were weakened, the whole thing pancaked. Here's a photo of them before the exterior walls were completed.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]Again, in hindsight. ... No one expected an attack like 9/11.[/quote]

[big][b]That's not true.[/b][/big]

When the Towers were car bombed in the '90s, the goal of the terrorists was to bring down one tower in the hope it would crash into the other.

Terrorists had also previously hijacked a commercial airliner with the intent to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. Fortunately, French commandos stormed the plane while it was on the ground refueling.

There was the Manila plot.

There was a small plane that was purposely crashed on the grounds of CIA headquarters.

There was the atack on the USS [i]Cole[/i].

Cruise ships were warned of potential terrorists attacks in June of 2001.

There was the [i]Achille Lauro[/i] hijacking in 1985.

Hell, there was even a guy in the 1970s who hijacked a commercial plane packed with passengers at Washington-Baltimore Airport. He killed the co-pilot, shot the pilot and ordered him to take off. He planned on later killing the pilot and steering the plane into the White House in an attempt to assassinate President Nixon. Fortunately, a flight attendent faked having difficulty closing and locking the door and a police officer shot him thru the door's window.

[b][big]So, puleeeeze. Spare me the "hindsight" excuse.[/big][/b]

@beckyromero 👌

@beckyromero I'm not saying no one knew that Islamic terrorists were planning to attack us. I'm saying that the flaws in our intelligence system and lack of [b]specific[/b] information on the ground prevented 9/11 from being thwarted. Notice that things have improved since then and other attacks have in fact been prevented.

@LeopoldBloom [quote] I'm saying that the flaws in our intelligence system and lack of specific information on the ground prevented 9/11 from being thwarted.[/quote]

KNOWING that Islamic terrorists intended to take over passenger jets and FLY THEM was all the "intelligence" that was needed to thwart their plans by having the FAA order the securing of all cockpit doors and not allow hijackers access to the cockpits under ANY circumstances.

THAT is what should have been done BEFORE 9/11 as the FBI knew about the flying schools in Minnesota AND Phoenix (both task forces reporting to the SAME high-ranking FBI official in Washington, D.C.), as well as having arrested Zacarias Moussaoui on August 16, 2001.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/national/fbi-chief-admits-911-might-have-been-detectable.html


[quote]Your plans for an FBI Headquarters' "Super Squad" simply fly in the face of an honest appraisal of the FBI's pre-September 11th failures. The Phoenix, Minneapolis and Paris Legal Attache Offices reacted remarkably exhibiting keen perception and prioritization skills regarding the terrorist threats they uncovered or were made aware of pre-September 11th. The same cannot be said for the FBI Headquarters' bureaucracy and you want to expand that?! Should we put the counterterrorism unit chief and SSA who previously handled the Moussaoui matter in charge of the new "Super Squad"?! You are also apparently disregarding the fact the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), operating out of field divisions for years, (the first and chief one being New York City's JTTF), have successfully handled numerous terrorism investigations and, in some instances, successfully prevented acts of terrorism. There's no denying the need for more and better intelligence and intelligence management, but you should think carefully about how much gate keeping power should be entrusted with any HQ entity. If we are indeed in a "war", shouldn't the Generals be on the battlefield instead of sitting in a spot removed from the action while still attempting to call the shots? [/quote]

Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller
(An edited version of the agent's 13-page letter)
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wtc_whistleblower1.htm